VietNamNet Bridge – A lot of policies were issued, but they had no meanings in the society’s life, and many of them even brought negative impacts. It is because the regulatory impact assessment (RIA), considered as the “policy filter” has been ignored.

Making RIA reports just for form’s sake

According to Le Duy Binh, an economic expert from Economica Vietnam, RIA is a tool used to analyze and measure the possible impacts to be caused by the changes in policies and suggest the ways to make the changes. This helps leaders choose optimum solutions which allow to minimize expenses and bring the highest benefits to the society.

In Vietnam, RIA is a compulsory part of the process of compiling legal documents and law implementation. The current laws stipulate that RIA must be made public on the Government’s website, and on the websites of the agencies which precise the compilation for collecting public opinions.

However, in fact, RIA has not got appropriate attention during the process of compiling legal documents. A lot of draft legal documents have been found as having no RIA reports.

These include the price management draft law, the advertisement draft law, the water natural resources draft law or the draft decree guiding the consumers’ right protection law. No RIA report has been found on the websites of the government, of the compilation agency, Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry VCCI, or the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, people can find the RIA report which has been associated with the bill on making complaints, but the RIA report shows the endnote that this is the document that serves the National Assembly’s meetings.

Regarding the quality of the reports, Binh said that most of the reports cannot meet the requirements, and that they have been done just for form’s sake. In many cases, the RIA reports have nearly the same contents with the summary about the laws.

The RIA report for the real estate tax bill, for example, also provides general information about the advantages and disadvantages of the bill. Meanwhile, readers cannot find the suggested solutions to settle the problems. The report also does not show the information about the expenses, the benefits of the different solutions, and about which solution should be chosen.

The same problems also can be found in the RIA reports of the public investment bill and the bill on making complaints.

Meanwhile, the RIA reports for the postal service bill and the insurance bill show suggested solutions, but do not include the information about the expenses and the expected benefits of every solution.

Wrong thinking

Binh said that one of the major mistakes that can be found in many RIA reports is that the report compilers try to prove that the suggested solutions are necessary, while a reverse process should be followed.

“If so, we will find out many different solutions to the same problems, including the solutions which do not require the promulgation of legal documents,” he said. “Only when no other usable solution is found, the promulgation of legal documents should be considered

It is clear that the promulgation of legal documents would put the financial burden on both the State and people, because the State has to spend money on building up the legal documents and implementing the new policies. Especially, low quality legal documents would cause immeasurable impacts.

Under the current laws, the legal documents issued by Prime Minister and the documents at lower levels, do not need to have RIA reports. Meanwhile, Lawyer Nguyen Thanh Tam said that this is unreasonable regulation. “This is a loophole,” he said.

Source: TBKTSG